


On the Importance of Meaningful Office Decor

by stingerpicnic (ibelieveinfiction)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Getting Together, Humor, Love Confession, M/M, Mutual Pining, Prowl might have sleepy bitch disease but don't tell anyone, and it's only been downhill from there, he has an image to maintain, it's a secret - Freeform, of being a morning person, once someone he respected told him the cybertronian equivalent of the early bird gets the worm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24779245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibelieveinfiction/pseuds/stingerpicnic
Summary: Jazz has known Prowl for his entire functioning. They’re best friends. He would like to think he knows everything a friend could ever hope to know about him.Prowl is very organized. His new knickknacks are not. It bothers Jazz more than it should that he can’t figure out the rhyme and reason behind the set-up.
Relationships: Jazz/Prowl
Comments: 17
Kudos: 114





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, long time listener, first time caller here. Jazz/Prowl was one of my first serious OTPs when I started interacting with fandom spaces and is by far my the ship that has held my attention the longest. I've read a good percentage of the fics available both here and on FF.net and I've finally decided to try and put something out there myself.
> 
> I started this about a year and a half ago before I dropped it. But I've recently gotten some motivation! So here's the first chapter.

Jazz hums along to the energetic song he’s set to internal playback as he makes his way through the empty corridors of the Ark.

He has two cubes of midgrade stuffed in his subspace, one of which is going to Prowl. _Someone_ has to make sure the mech doesn’t subsist entirely on that tar he insists he actually enjoys, somehow. He accepted it was going to have to be him ages ago. 

Jazz doesn’t get how he can get it down his intake. Concentrated energon tastes like utter _slag_ in his opinion, but then he doesn’t really think Prowl’s in it for the taste. 

Sure, tar will absolutely wake him up (privately, Jazz thinks it might just about bring a mech back from the brink of death, the energy they’d gain from a cube of it enough for them to manage to sit up and berate whoever it gave it to them for making them taste something so terrible in their last moments), but it isn’t good for him. Some mechs even think it might actively be bad for a bot’s health if consumed too often or in too large quantities—something that Prowl definitely did. He would drink four cubes in one sitting if someone didn’t stop him. 

For such a smart, capable mech, he can really be an idiot about some things. A stubborn idiot at that. 

Like, really, _who_ is going to care if it got out that he isn’t actually much of a morning bot? Optimus? There is literally nobody on the Ark who would have any room to judge him. 

_Honestly._ He’s ridiculous for getting up so early when he could easily just, you know, _not_ do that—he’s responsible for setting the schedules for Primus’ sake! He could just give himself a later shift! But no, he has to beat the sun itself to wakefulness, apparently. If he didn’t know any better, he would think they were engaged in a competition to see who could wake up first.

If Jazz ever finds out who made Prowl think he has to get up this early, that mech will very suddenly and mysteriously disappear and _no one_ will be able to find their body.

The only mechs that have a right to be awake at this hour are those stuck on the night shift. The only mechs that _are_ awake at this hour are those stuck on the night shift.

Well, the bots stuck on the night shift and Jazz. Hopefully Prowl as well.

Or maybe not _hopefully_. A sleepy Prowl is an adorable Prowl. Jazz’s grin widens at the thought that he’s one of the only mechs who have the privilege of seeing him like that.

He’s glad he still has that privilege. He had feared he might never see a sleepy Prowl again when they enlisted. That would have been a true tragedy.

Eventually, he’ll see a sleepy Prowl for the last time. Eventually, Prowl will find someone else to spend his sleepy mornings with. Eventually, Jazz won’t even have the privilege of being the first bot to brighten his morning.

He viciously aborts that processing thread. He will deal with the cold, hard, sparkbreaking reality that is “eventually” when it breaks into his quarters and kicks him in the straight chest plates itself and not a moment before.

Until then, he has a tired tactician to share breakfast with and a conversation to carry for said tired tactician while the mech tries to wake up enough to feel real again. Then, they will sit across from each other at Prowl’s desk and do reports that are so mundane and routine that they could practically do them in their recharge and Prowl will join him in conversation. They’ll talk about something nice, like how creatively Sideswipe is presenting the truth about his latest prank in his report, until they finally have to start preparing for the day’s meetings. 

It’s by far the best part of Jazz’s day and he isn’t willing to sour his good mood by thinking about losing it, Especially when Prowl hasn’t made any indication that he wants to stop their little tradition to spend his mornings in bed with some other mech. 

Jazz decides he’ll make an extra effort to make Prowl laugh this morning. The normal chuckles he usually gets for his efforts won’t be enough. He _will_ get a full laugh. He isn’t sure how yet, but he’s confident he will think of something. 

Maybe he’ll try wordplay. That can usually get a laugh out of Prowl if they’re alone. The fact that his office is soundproofed only heightens his chances.

Prowl would never admit it to anyone else, but he finds wordplay hysterical. If anyone asks, he’ll defend his love of it by claiming that it’s the “most intelligent form of comedy available to us and I would never lower himself to the level of _toilet humor,_ Jazz, blah, blah, blah.” 

Jazz can see right through him though. He doubts that any other mech on the Ark would, at least not immediately, so maybe it isn’t _so bad_ an excuse. But any plan that hinged on the idea that most mechs have never given Prowl enough of a chance to really get to know him wasn’t going to be a plan he liked. Prowl uses that idea to justify hiding further and further behind his walls far too often. 

Still, it might have been a believable defense if it wasn’t for how his love of wordplay manifested itself.

Unfortunately for Prowl and his walls, Jazz is an _excellent_ climber and he already knows where all the footholds are. He’s a mech on a mission and he has all the information he needs to take down his target: Prowl is weak to puns, the dumber and more terrible the better.

Finally arriving at Prowl’s door, cuts his internal playback and pings for entrance. He makes it a step and a half inside before he realizes that something is different. 

Prowl is looking slightly more awake than usual, lips upturned just enough to be noticeable. He was obviously waiting for Jazz to show up. 

For half a klik he thinks that “eventually” has come knocking and Prowl is going to tell him that his mornings belong to someone else now. 

He’s in the process of digging through his directories to find the file that will keep his smile from falling at the news, but then he spots the mostly empty cube that, if the color of the small amount of fuel still left in it are any indication, must have once been full of the tar Prowl hadn’t had to depend on since they had instituted their morning tradition. There’s only one, and the way Prowl’s optics are still dimmed tells him it’s recent and there haven’t been any others. 

Oh, and there are some new shelves supporting several colored cubes on elegant little stands directly across from his desk. He probably should have seen that first, it isn’t small. 

Jazz lets himself relax. He still keeps that file where he can reach it, just in case, but sets his processing power to scour his memory banks for anything that might tell him why Prowl might have spontaneously decided to redecorate his office. He thinks he knows what it might have been anyways.

Well, maybe he won’t have to think too hard to come up with something to make Prowl laugh this morning after all. He already looks like he’s in a good mood, maybe even a playful one, based on the set of his doorwings. He would probably go along with the bit if Jazz decided he was going to be dramatic right now. A drawn-out scene in the privacy of his office will wring a laugh out of him if Jazz plays his cards right. 

He can’t be absolutely sure of that until Prowl speaks though. He can’t start off with something over-the-top dramatic, just in case he isn’t really feeling playful. 

“I can’t believe this.” 

“Good morning to you too, Jazz.” 

He’s right, Prowl _is_ willing to play. Every mech that has _ever_ said Prowl’s voice is dull and monotone needs to get their slagging audials checked. If they just paid attention, they wouldn’t say that. Prowl may have learned how to govern the movements of his frame with an iron fist over the vorns, but he had never been quite able to do the same with his vocalizer. Jazz could easily get a read on his mood from his voice alone. Other mechs just weren’t _listening._

Jazz tears his gaze away from the new addition to Prowl’s office to give the tactician his best “you’ve not only broken my trust but also deeply offended me” face, intentionally over exaggerating every movement it takes to get him there. He stays there, moving his mouth around the first syllable of the greeting like it’s some grave insult and he’s having trouble comprehending that Prowl had just gone there. 

“Good morning? _Good morning?!_ How could this possibly be a good morning? I’ve just found out that my _best and closest friend_ has apparently never heard a single word I’ve said to him in our millennia of friendship!” 

“I listen to everything you say.” 

“Really? Because I could have sworn that I’ve been on you about this exact thing since before we enrolled in the Academy, but our resident anger dandelion Sunstreaker mentions the same exact thing _once_ and suddenly you act on the advice!? How do you explain that if you “listen to everything I say,” huh?” 

“Jazz, of course I listen to you. Just last week you were telling me some facts about hummingbirds.” 

Jazz gasped. “That was _Hound!”_

“Oh. My mistake, you two are just so similar. You must have been telling me about the pod of whales you saw on your recent excursion to the coast.” 

“Skyfire!” 

“The progress of the repairs to storage room 27-B after the incident two weeks ago, then.” 

“Hoist and Grapple!” 

“That human soap opera?” 

_“Prowl!”_ he whines. 

Jazz pouts. It’s a very good pout if you ask him. Absolutely no hint of a grin trying to escape the iron control he has on his faceplates. If anyone says otherwise, he will just have to pin it on Prowl for his unnatural ability to keep an unreasonably straight face for so early in the day and making him look bad. 

Prowl states back at his implacably from the other side of his desk, not at all moved.

“…It was the chess tournament, right?” 

Jazz makes a distressed noise and flops directly onto the floor. Face first. 

Jazz dramatically groans into the spotless floor of Prowl’s office. 

“…Is that a no?” 

Jazz jerks his helm up, glaring. 

There is a definite undercurrent of amusement in Prowl’s voice now, the same sort that appears when he’s close to laughing but valiantly trying to keep a straight face for the bit (which was different than when he was trying not to laugh because he was supposed to be the responsible one, or when he was trying to avoid revealing that he has a sense of humor to all the bots in the rec room, or any of his other “I’m actually very amused but I don’t want to sound _too_ amused” voices that Jazz has heard over their millennia of friendship, yet some bots still insist that he doesn’t feel anything at all). Thus far he’d been holding it in far better than Jazz, only letting the barest hint of amusement seep into his voice. Barely any at all, in fact. Easily missed if a mech wasn’t paying attention, and maybe even then most would have difficulties. 

But Jazz isn’t just any mech and he hasn’t stopped paying attention to the way Prowl speaks since they were mechlings and he decided to start presenting a stoic front to the world. And even after he accomplished his goal of understanding the nuances of Prowl’s voice, he hadn’t been able to stop listening. He had become too enamored. His determination to listen only grew when they joined the Autobots and mechs started to question whether he even _had_ emotions and Prowl began throwing up even more walls between himself and the rest of the world. 

Now, though, any mech might be able to see that Prowl was having fun, which meant Jazz was well within his rights to call him out on it. 

Pushing himself up off the floor and onto his knees, Jazz levels an accusatory digit at Prowl’s smirking face. 

“You think this is funny,” he growls, shuffling closer to the desk on his knees. Prowl’s lips twitch upwards. 

“Don’t try to deny it!” He was right up against the desk now, still pointing his digit right in Prowl’s face. “I know you think that my misery and betrayed trust are just downright _hilarious,_ ” he attempts to spit vehemently, voice wobbling on a barely suppressed laugh. “You think _I’m_ hilarious!” 

“Well, yes.” 

Jazz frowns as deeply as he can, stretching just a little further until his digit brushes Prowl’s nasal ridge. 

“I knew—” 

Prowl speaks over him. 

“Hello hilarious, my name is Prowl.” 

Jazz makes a loud noise of disgust, throwing himself backwards so hard he ends up on his aft halfway across the room. 

He hears a snort followed by some snickering from back where he came from. _Mission success._ It isn’t over yet, though. He can do better.

“That’s it, our friendship is over. Goodbye Prowl, my new best friend is Floor-y,” he declares, gesturing dramatically at the floor he’s seated on, “at least _they_ have never let me down.” 

“Floor-y?” Prowl manages, voice breaking on the word. 

“Yes, _Floor-y_. They’ve always supported me. They’ve always been a solid presence in my life. They always catch me when I fall.” He opens his arms and flops down on his back in an approximation of a trust fall. “See!” 

“But—Floor-y?” 

“Hush, you! Floor-y and I will be very happy together! Our friendship will be great and un- _floor_ -tunately for you, you’re not invited. You’ll just have to stay over there with your new _knickknacks,”_ he says, turning over onto his front so he could make a show of trying to give “Floor-y” a hug. 

_There’s_ that full laugh he had wanted. 

Jazz finally allows himself to give in to his laugh as well. This is the right way to start off a day. 

Heaving himself off the floor, he moves to sit in the chair across the desk from Prowl, unsubspacing the energon he brought. But before he can take more than a step, Prowl, still chuckling, holds up a servo. 

“Wait,” he says, “you only just made a new friend, we can’t exclude them from breakfast.” 

And with that, the Autobots’ Second in Command, known far and wide for being unshakably stoic and professional, stood from his chair to walk around his desk and sit on the floor. 

“Well, aren’t you going to join us, Jazz?” He patted the spot next to him. 

Of course, he would. There are precious few things that Jazz wouldn’t do for him, and only slightly more things he hasn’t done for him. Having breakfast on the floor is nothing. Plus, he can cuddle up to him without the implied formality of chairs and desks stopping him. 

Prowl is still shaking with laughter (and maybe tiredness, he should really start drinking that energon) and smiling up at him, optics struggling to choose between dimming from the fatigue that still clung to him and brightening from the happiness he was feeling despite it. More of his walls are down than Jazz had seen in _weeks_ and it was because of _him._ Primus himself could walk through the door right now and offer anything to walk out the door and even that wouldn’t stop Jazz from sitting down on the floor with Prowl like they were younglings again. 

So, he promptly sits his aft on the ground for the umpteenth time this morning, handing Prowl the cubes so he could get comfortable. He welcomes the meshing of fields that comes with being in close contact like an old, cherished friend. 

“Jazz.” 

Prowl waits for Jazz to meet his optics, face too straight, field too controlled. 

“I guess you could call this,” he says, holding up the two cubes and gesturing vaguely, “a floor course meal.” 

* * *

“So, why _did_ you decide to finally take my advice and decorate your office, Prowler?” 

Jazz is resting his helm on Prowl’s shoulder, where he buried his face there during their laughing fit. Their fields mesh pleasantly, sharing amusement and a very satisfying sense of contentment. He isn’t willing to give up the contact yet and Prowl hasn’t asked him to.

“I always intended to decorate. It just took me a while to find something suitable for my office.” 

That is true. Prowl always refused his suggestions by saying that they were too distracting, or too optic-catching, or too dangerous to have in office for whatever reason. He doesn’t like to fill his office with things that aren't functional. He only makes the rare exception for things with extreme sentimental value that he had copies of, like the holocube he keeps in the top drawer of his desk.

But that still begs the question: _why_ has he decided to cover one of his walls in colorful cubes, of all possible decorations? 

“It took you _millennia_ to find a suitable office decoration?” That’s a good question too. Jazz has been pestering him about decorating his space since they were mechlings.

“No, but it did take millennia for my risk/reward calculations to be within an acceptable margin,” he says, as if that makes any sense. 

“The risk/reward calculations you were doing. To determine how to decorate your office.” Prowl _would_ do formal risk/reward calculations for putting up some knickknacks. Unbelievable.

“Correct.” 

Prowl sounds inordinately pleased with himself. It’s _suspicious_. He’s immediately curious to know exactly what sort of risk/reward calculations could possibly go into choosing an office decoration that have held him up for millennia and what counts as an acceptable risk/reward ratio for installing some cubes.

He bets Prowl knows he’s even more curious now too. He probably did it on purpose. Slagger. 

Prowl isn’t likely to give him the answers he craves anytime soon, so Jazz turns his attention to the installation itself.

The cubes really don’t seem like they have a function beyond being potential projectiles or paperweights. The new shelving is directly across from his desk and therefore within Prowl’s line of sight all the time, though that placement makes their potential functions of emergency weapons or classy paperweights seem less likely. Besides, if he wanted emergency weapons out his decorations Jazz hopes he would have taken him up on his offer to hang up some maybe-not-so-decorative decorative sabers he had made vorns ago.

The cubes are all identical as far as he can tell, aside from the colors, which span an array of blues and greens. But they’re not arranged in a neat gradient, which would make sense for Prowl. Instead, they seem to be placed haphazardly in groupings that don’t make any sense to Jazz’s optic. They don’t seem to follow any color based organizational system he has ever heard of or seen Prowl use, greens mixed in with blues and lighter shades with darker shades. 

It doesn’t make any _sense._ Prowl is the most organized person he knows--he even painstakingly organizes the insides of his desk drawers, which no one but him ever sees. He’s been like that since he was old enough to understand organizational systems. 

So this _can’t_ be the only thing in his office that isn’t organized. There has to be something he’s not seeing. It would be far too distracting for Prowl to keep in his otherwise.

“Are you sure it won’t distract you?” he ventures, “It looks kind of… unorganized.” 

“It is perfectly organized.” Of course he would say that.

“With _what_ kind of organizational system?” 

“My kind of organizational system.” _Excuse me?_ Since when has that been an acceptable answer to that question in Prowl’s book?

“Don’t give me that! You never let me get away with it when I say that about _my_ office.” 

“That’s because your office is a mess. How are you supposed to keep track of when your reports are supposed to be filed if they aren’t organized by date, if nothing else?” 

“I manage just fine, thank you very much,” he says, shoving him lightly. “It’s just that _that_ looks out of place in your organized office.” 

“It _is_ organized.” 

Jazz lifts his head up to give Prowl a _look_ that communicates his feelings about that. All he gets in return is a smirk. 

Well, if Prowl isn’t ready to volunteer that information yet, experience says it’s fairly pointless to push him on it. He probably wants Jazz to figure it out himself, though Primus knows that’s going to be impossible. His voice had the same sort of mischievous undertone it gets when they played strategy games and he has a particularly sneaky plan for destroying him. 

Alright, if he wants to play this game, they can play. 

“Any reason you went for this color palette?” he tries. He needs some sort of hint to get him started. 

“They are my favorite color.” 

Jazz looks up at the shelf. 

“Prowl, you know all those cubes are different colors, right?” 

“I am aware.” He sounds unreasonably amused. Like _Jazz_ is the one who isn’t making any sense and he’s only humoring him. 

“Prowl, you can’t have that many favorite colors. There’s like _at least_ thirty up there.” 

“I have to disagree.” 

“Prowl.” 

Jazz shoots him a look. 

“Would it help if I told you that those are the colors of something very precious to me?” he says. He sounds faintly apologetic. Jazz thinks he just might forgive him. 

“Ah-hah! So, it _is_ based off something.” At least that’s a clue he can use.

He takes another look at the cubes. He logs all their colors exactly, both as image files and as their hex codes. He has a feeling he will be comparing them to the colors of things he knows Prowl likes for the next several orns.

“Yes. Organizational systems generally are based off something. Otherwise they wouldn’t be very effective.” 

“You know that’s not what I meant.” 

“I have no idea what you’re referring to,” he says. Jazz can hear the faux-innocence in his voice. He really can’t believe how others can’t tell when Prowl is messing with them when it’s so clear. 

“Ugh, you’re awful.” 

Prowl frowns. “Jazz, I thought we went over this. I am Prowl.” 

Jazz groans. 

“If you are having memory issues you should really—” 

“Oh my Primus.” 

“—speak to Ratchet. It’s not uncommon for mechs your age—” 

“We are the _same age.”_

“—to experience some difficulty in accessing their memory core.” 

“Ugh. I hate you.” 

Prowl’s optics soften, a small smile sliding onto his lips like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Like _Jazz_ makes it easy. 

“You do not.” 

Primus, he sounds so slagging self-assured and _fond._ How dare he sound like that after making such a terrible joke. He’s going to break Jazz’s whole spark when he finds someone good enough to love back. 

“Yeah, I don’t.” 

Frag his spark. He doesn’t need it. What was so great about an intact spark, anyways? He’ll cling to moments like this as long as Prowl will let him, sparkbreaking or not. It’s something he’s known and accepted for vorns now.

“In fact,” he says, using his pede to drag over one of the chairs Prowl keeps for visitors so they don’t have to, you know, sit on the floor, “I actually _chair_ a lot about you.” 

That got him a grin, so he tried another. And another. And another. He kept going until they were both trading puns back and forth, giggling and groaning at each other’s increasingly bad attempts at humor like they were younglings again.

* * *

It’s some time later when Prowl looks down and sighs, “We should get up.” 

Jazz glances at his cube, forgotten on the floor beside them. It’s empty. It might have been empty for a while. He didn’t even notice he’d been drinking it. 

Jazz frowns, accessing his chronometer. It’s gotten a lot later than he had thought, almost time for the day’s meetings to start. He’d lost track of time. It figured that Prowl hadn't. 

“Yeah, we should.” He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice, but he really doesn’t want to give up the comfortable press of Prowl’s plating against his own, comforting and warm in all the right ways. 

He heaves himself up. As much as he hates it sometimes, he still has duties. 

Plus, he can’t offer Prowl a servo to help him up if he doesn’t get up first. 

Sometime in the time they were on the floor, Prowl’s optics had finally brightened in happiness and stayed that way, the lingering effects of recharge no longer clinging to his frame. Jazz didn’t know exactly when it happened, he had split attention between thinking up the next pun and listening to Prowl’s voice, not tracking the exact shade of his optics. Which really means his attention had been almost entirely on Prowl’s voice. He would like to think of himself as a smart mech; and it’s not like puns are the most difficult thing he’s set his processor to work on. 

And he’s had a lot of practice.

“Same time tomorrow?” he offers when Prowl is back on his pedes.

“Of course.”


	2. Chapter 2

If asked he would deny it, but Jazz is just as much of a workaholic as Powl. He’s just better at hiding it, making it seem like he’s taking a break when, really, he isn’t. A mech doesn’t get into his position by being lazy.

Which is why Jazz isn’t exactly surprised when his internal alarm pulls him out of recharge and the first thing he sees is the familiar clutter of his office.

He must have fallen into recharge in his office again. At least he had the foresight to pull his cot down

He sits up with a groan and slides off the cot with less than his usual grace. When he’s steady on his pedes, he stretches his arms over his helm and bends backward until he feels stiff cables pull and loosen. Then he bends forward until he can touch his pedes. He snatches up the datapad he spots on the floor as he straightens back out.

Onlining the datapad with one servo and using the other to push the pull-down cot back up and into the wall, once again concealing the rack of menacing but otherwise perfectly legal weapons - which itself conceals a second rack of menacing, decidedly  _ illegal _ weapons - within the wall, Jazz skims through the contents. It’s pretty standard fare, a routine report from Hound. Nothing too interesting, but some of the details stand out to him.

Well, at least that explains the odd recharge flux he had. He had thought that deer was out of place. How could an Earth-native deer have even gotten admitted to Sunstreaker’s School of Beauty and Art? They don’t even have plating to paint. And it might be tricky for them to hold a brush without any grasping appendages to speak of. And don’t even get him  _ started _ on the falcon.

...Perhaps he shouldn’t read reports right before recharge.

Well, nothing to be done for it now. And it’s not like he does it that often. He just had a lot of work to get through last night. A situation that was not helped by the datapads he didn’t get through with Prowl the previous morning.

Speaking of, he steps over to his desk, opens one of the drawers, and lifts out the stack of what he knows to be datapads containing low-level, routine reports. Shoving them unceremoniously into his subspace, he steps out into the hallway and heads in the direction of the rec room to retrieve his and Prowl’s morning energon.

* * *

Jazz is suspicious the instant he steps foot into Prowl’s office.

Prowl is hunched over his desk. There’s tension evident in the lines of his frame, the set and tremble of his doorwings, the whine of his engine. There are datapads scattered over the surface of his desk and, most damningly, the  _ floor. _ Jazz thinks he sees his favorite stylus under one of the visitor chairs.

Jazz bends to scoop up the few datapads that have escaped the clutches of Prowl’s desk and deposited them right back on it in some semblance of a stack. It speaks to just how uncomfortable Prowl must be that he doesn’t even seem to notice the stack’s disarray, let alone comment on it.

“You recharged at your desk.” It’s not a question.

“...Yes.” Voice strained, optics too bright for so early in the morning, frame held perfectly still. He’s  _ definitely _ uncomfortable.

Jazz feels a twinge of sympathy. He can still feel the ache in his cables from his night spent curled up on his cot and he doesn’t even have doorwings to strain

“Want help?” he says, wiggling his digits at him in a way that manages to pull a grin out of Prowl’s grimace. With another mech, he might have just activated his mags and gotten started, but it took one lesson to learn to ask first before touching a mech’s doorwings. He would rather not be lifted off his pedes with claws at his throat and pinned to the wall again. At least, not without prior consent.

“Please.” Relieved, thankful, but still strained. Jazz doesn’t waste any time moving behind the desk and activating the mags in his servos. He pushes warmth and comfort into his field, feels the way Prowl latches onto it.

The first touch to his hinges earns him a pleased sigh as the first bit of tension bleeds out of his frame. Jazz drags his servos from the hinges over the length of the doors, following the direction of the branching sensor clusters that make up their neural net. Prowl leans heavier onto his elbows on the desk.

He covers every inch of both Prowl’s wings like that, then places one servo over his hinges and slowly drags the other across the bottom edge of one of his wings, pulsing the mags in time with each other. Prowl’s intakes shudder on each pulse

“You would think that I would have learned my lesson in the Academy,” Prowl says. It distracts him from listening to Prowl’s reactions, but he really can’t be mad.

“Only if you forget how stubborn you can be,” he says. Prowl is one of the most stubborn mechs on the Ark and they both know it. “You didn’t pass out at the desks in the library every other night because you never regretted it in the morning

Jazz takes a doorwing in servo, presses his digits into just the right spot in between the hinges, and  _ pulls _ until the cables relax. Prowl  _ moans _ and sinks further forward onto his desk, engine finally shifting from its stressed while and into a purr that positively sings of pleasure.

“I rarely actually recharged in the library, Jazz.” The strain in his voice has lessened. Progress.

Jazz scoffs. “Then what do you call all those times I found you face down on a desk with dark optics? Resting your optics? Were you trying to absorb the information on the datapads through passive osmosis? Were you  _ de-draining _

“I call it taking a power nap. It was strategic, of course. Returning to our dorm would have only wasted time

Jazz knows Prowl is grinning. He might not be able to see it from this angle, but he can hear it. He shifts his attention from his doors, which are now softly fluttering in pleasure, to his shoulders, intent on working out the kinks in his cables

Jazz hums, doubtful. “Is it really a power nap if you’re fully intending to recharge until your internal alarm wakes you for class, though?” He can feel the knots Prowl’s cables have twisted into under his servos. He ups the power to his mags and digs his claws into the gaps of his armour. He gets a hissed intake and a pleased grunt for his efforts.

“Only if you actually do that. I almost always got up before my alarm for class

If he could just get the right angle he knows he can get this knot out Prowl’s plating. Maybe if he... there! Prowl’s shoulders slump as the knot releases. Jazz relishes the sound of his engine pitching downward into an even deeper purr.

“Only because I went and got you! If it wasn’t for me, you would never have recharged in your berth as much as you did

With his helm tilted forward, Prowl’s neck cables look terribly inviting. Jazz pushes  _ safety  _ into his field and slowly slides one of his servos up to rest on the back of Prowl’s neck. The mere pulse of his still active mags so close to his neck cables is enough to drag out a sigh

It’s indescribable pleasure to see that Prowl doesn’t tense up at all when his servo makes contact with his neck cables, better that he actually relaxes into his touch.

“And you would have gotten in a lot more trouble for many of the things you did if it wasn’t for me

He digs his thumb into the space where Prowl’s neck cables and collar flaring meet, feels the release of tension as the cluster of cables under his digits relax as intimately as if it was his own neck.

“That’s not true!” he says, indignant. He was plenty skilled at stealth, even then. He gives a flick to the back of Prowl’s for the insult. “I was too good to get caught sneaking around. There was never any evidence.” He starts kneading the cables at the base of his helm

“The oil cake incident.” Frag, he’s got him there. He had almost forgotten about  _ that _ particular disaster. Leave it to Prowl to remind him.

“…Touche

It’s quiet for a while as Jazz continues bleeding the tension from Prowl’s frame, the rumble of their engines and Prowl’s soft noises of pleasure and the only sounds. He can’t help but remember all the times he had been in this very position throughout their friendship, the times they’ve covered for each other, been there for each other.

Jazz’s servos still. “We made a good team,” he says.

Prowl leans back and reaches up to grab his servo, tangling their digits together. He bends his helm back, the servo that was resting on the back of his neck slipping down to dangle limply over his chest. He’s looking directly into Jazz’s optics, straight past the glowing glass of his visor. Prowl has always had a knack for that. He’s always known exactly where he’s looking and right now Jazz is looking right back at him.

Prowl’s optics are dim - early morning pleasure and fatigue lowering their brightness until their glow only just spills out, barely reflecting off the sensitive metal of his optical shutters, the sensitive support structures for his optics, the side of his nasal ridge. His faceplates are soft, his mouth curving into a private kind of smile.

He squeezes Jazz’s servo. “We still do,” he says

Jazz squeezes back. “Yeah,” he says, “we do.”

He lets the moment hang between them for a moment. “And part of that is because I make sure you regularly consume energon,” he says, voice taking on a teasing edge. And suddenly Prowl’s morning cube is out of his subspace and into the servo Prowl isn’t holding, held perilously close to Prowl’s faceplates. “Which you still haven’t done this morning. You better get to it, Prowler, before I’m forced to revoke your massage privileges indefinitely.”

Prowl’s optics flare in amused surprise and he glances down, only to be met with a wall of bright pink directly in front of his optics. He gives an amused exvent

“Well, I wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize  _ that,” _ he says, “Whatever would I do without you?” He sounds… oddly sincere about that, but Jazz doesn’t have much time to dwell on it. Prowl reaches for the cube with his free servo, but instead of taking it from him like he’s done thousands of times before, he overlaps their digits and brings the cube in for a long sip. “Thank you, Jazz.”  _ What the frag _

Then, Prowl shifts his grip on the cube to take it from him -  _ properly _ this time - and releases his other servo. He straightens ups and grabs a datapad from the stack on his desk, for all the world appearing as if he had never been relaxing back into Jazz’s servos.

There’s a moment where Jazz is frozen, suddenly empty servos hanging in the air, then it’s gone and he’s letting out a vent he didn’t he was holding. Hopefully he recovered fast enough that Prowl didn’t notice, but Jazz doubts it.

“We should get started if we don’t want a repeat of last night,” Prowl says, and Jazz thinks it’s unfair how he can sound so unaffected. “Though I certainly wouldn’t mind a repeat of this morning.”

“You know my servos are at your service, Prowler. Anything I can do, all you gotta do is ask,” he says, following it up with a wink as he rounds the desk- briefly offlining half his visor even as he scrambles to make sense of what’s happening. It’s true anyways, he’s used his servos for far worse things under Prowl’s orders

The way he flops into the chair opposite Prowl’s desk is deliberately casual. He leans back, unsubspaces a datapad from the pile he grabbed from his office, and throws a leg up over the armrest. He expects to get a disapproving look from Prowl at that, perhaps a comment about learning to sit in chairs correctly, something that will distract from the absolute sincerity of what he just said, but when he looks up Prowl is smiling at him. “I’ll keep that mind,” he says

It’s  _ really _ unfair that Prowl can sound so unaffected, like his response was not only expected, but counted on. Jazz turns his attention to his report

“If your servos are really mine for the asking,” Prowl says, Jazz almost dreads what he’s going to say next, this morning has already been odd enough, “then can you please grab my stylus? I believe it’s under your chair

“Yeah, sure,” he says, relieved that his request was something  _ normal. _ Instead of getting out of the chair, he twists until his questing digits feel the stylus. He grabs it and tosses it to Prowl

Eager to get the morning back on track, Jazz launches into the story about how Hound’s report affected his recharge last night.

The rest of the morning proceeds as it normally does - as it  _ should _ \- Jazz is happy to report. The reports are dry, but some of them are entertaining. Bluestreak’s reports are always long and detailed, but that only makes his account of how Sunstreaker fell down a small cliff on their shared patrol and his subsequent hissy fit more entertaining. Ratchet’s routine reports also tend to be pretty funny. Where he isn’t clinical, he inserts small asides about the absolute idiocy of the crew and some rather pointed comments about the importance of regular maintenance. And listening to Prowl rant about some of the (admittedly ridiculous) items that appear on some of the requisition requests ( _ who _ needs that much aluminum foil and  _ why) _ has always been fun.

Ultimately, his morning is normal enough that by the time he waves Prowl goodbye, Jazz has nearly forgotten that it started off so oddly

It’s only as Jazz is on his way to his first meeting of the day that he remembers to check the continuous log colors and shades he started the second he left Prowl’s office the morning before. It’s only then that he realizes he should have checked it earlier, if only to ask Prowl why the frag the only matches he’s gotten in the past twenty-four hours have been the colors of bots’ optics.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I do headcanon that Prowl uses his super advanced TacNet to help him set up puns and make dad jokes when he's not using it for professional purposes. Change my mind.
> 
> So, any guesses what's up with Prowl's weirdly disorganized wall of long awaited knickknacks? Jazz sure doesn't have any idea.
> 
> As always, feel free to come scream about these boys with me on [my tumblr.](stingerpicnic.tumblr.com)


End file.
